Image Comics, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this summer, just filled a gap in its lineup with the acquisition of Frank Cho's Liberty Meadows, one of the top contemporary humor comics.  Liberty Meadows was a popular and successful newspaper comic strip when Cho decided to end his newspaper syndication agreements on Dec. 31, 2001 and publish Liberty Meadows as a comic book (see 'Liberty Meadows Wedding Album Stirs Traffic').  Now Cho has brought his creation to Image, which he feels is the '...perfect home for Liberty Meadows...with the creative freedom and big company resources that Liberty Meadows needs.'  Liberty Meadows will debut under the Image imprint in July with the release of a new trade paperback collection.  The Liberty Meadows comic series will follow in August with its first Image issue, which will be #27 in the on-going series.

 

Under the leadership of Jim Valentino, Image has been expanding its roster recently with the addition of the Joseph Michael Linsner Library, Leave it to Chance, Bastard Samurai, the Micronauts, and G.I. Joe.  The addition of Liberty Meadows will provide some levity for the Image line.  Image does plan some changes for the Liberty Meadows comic series format.  To display the strips in the proper horizontal format, the comics will be published in a landscape (wider than tall) format.  However, in order to make for ease of display in comic shops, the covers will continue to run in the standard vertical format used by most comics.  The Liberty Meadows comic series will continue to be published in black and white on a bi-monthly basis.

 

The trade paperback collection, due in July, will be entitled Liberty Meadows, Volume One, and will be published in the same format as Cho's recent art book, The Frank Cho Illustrator, and will feature all the daily strips reprinted in Liberty Meadows #1-9.  The Sunday strips will be collected in a separate book.